Christina of Sweden

Christina inherited the Swedish throne as a small child in 1632, ruled at the height of Sweden's power, and then astonished Europe in 1654 by giving up her crown, converting to Catholicism and moving to Rome. One of the most learned women of the 17th century, she spent her long exile as a patron of music, theatre and scholarship, and she is one of very few women buried in the Vatican Grottoes.

Christina was born at Tre Kronor castle in Stockholm in December 1626, the only surviving child of King Gustavus Adolphus and his German queen, Maria Eleonora. At first the baby was taken for a boy. Her father was delighted with her regardless and ordered that she be educated as a prince would be. When he was killed at the Battle of Lützen in November 1632, during the Thirty Years' War, the five-year-old became monarch, formally with the title of king. Government passed to a regency led by the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, and in 1636 her unstable mother lost custody of her.

Christina proved a prodigious student. She studied theology, philosophy, Greek and Latin, discussed Tacitus with Oxenstierna, and learned a string of languages, including French, Italian, Arabic and Hebrew.

Declared of age in 1644, at 18, she took over a Sweden at war with Denmark. The resulting Treaty of Brömsebro gave Sweden Gotland, Ösel, Jämtland and Härjedalen. Christina soon broke with Oxenstierna, pressing for an end to the war in Germany, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 brought Sweden five million thalers and lands on the German coast, including western Pomerania and Bremen. She was crowned only in October 1650.

Christina wanted Stockholm to become a northern Athens. Books and art looted by Swedish armies, above all the treasures of the emperor Rudolf II seized at Prague in 1648, filled her collections. She corresponded with scholars across Europe and in 1649 persuaded René Descartes to come to Stockholm. Their lessons, held at five in the morning, were not a success, and Descartes died there of pneumonia in February 1650. Her court also welcomed French ballet, Italian opera and Dutch actors.

From early on Christina refused to marry, and in 1649 she persuaded the Riksdag to accept her cousin Charles Gustav as heir. Meanwhile she was quietly drawn to Catholicism through Jesuit visitors, and by about 1652 had decided to convert, which was impossible for a Lutheran monarch. Discontent also grew at her extravagance: during her reign the number of noble families roughly doubled, and crown property yielding some 1.2 million riksdaler a year was sold or mortgaged to support them. On 6 June 1654, at Uppsala Castle, she abdicated in favour of Charles X Gustav.

Leaving Sweden dressed as a man, she was received privately into the Catholic Church in Brussels on Christmas Eve 1654 and announced her conversion publicly at Innsbruck in November 1655. Her entry into Rome in December 1655 was a triumph for Pope Alexander VII. She then tried, with French backing, to become queen of Naples. That scheme collapsed, and in 1657 at Fontainebleau she had her master of the horse, Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi, killed by her servants for alleged treachery. She insisted the act was within her rights; much of Europe was shocked, and the pope became openly hostile.

Christina settled in the Palazzo Riario in Rome, close to her friend Cardinal Decio Azzolino. She twice returned to Sweden, and in 1668 put herself forward without success for the elective throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Rome she opened the city's first public theatre in 1671, supported composers such as Carissimi and Stradella, protested against the persecution of French Protestants and took the city's Jews under her protection in 1686. She died on 19 April 1689 and was buried in St Peter's.

Our 1650 map shows the Swedish empire around the Baltic at the end of her personal reign, and the Papal States where she spent her exile.